Showing posts with label US ag fotze jeff sessions. Show all posts

12 May 2017

Report: Comey Thought His Firing Was a Prank and Laughed It Off & Trump Goes Full Watergate—and Threatens Russia Investigation 9MAY17

james comey's reaction to the news he had been fired is classic. He thought he was untouchable, and though he said it made him sick to think his pronouncements about Hillary Clinton might influence the 2016 Presidential election (does anyone believe him?) the fact that he is such a loose cannon and the calls for investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election and the possible collusion of the drumpf/trump-pence campaign continuing (NOT MY) president drumpf/trump took the advise of aids and heads from the Justice Department and fired him. There are so many lies and attempts of deception and manipulation of the facts the White House is is in turmoil with accusations flying from and against everyone who is a part of this corrupt administration. STILL, the Democratic Party, with sane republicans and the loyal (to our Republic) opposition can not, must not, give up on finding the truth and prosecuting anyone and everyone who has broken the law. This from +Mother Jones

Report: Comey Thought His Firing Was a Prank and Laughed It Off

Wow.

JAMES WESTMAY 9, 2017 9:21 PM

Of all the astounding details pouring out tonight about President Donald Trump's sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, this bit will surely make your jaw drop.

According to the New York Times's Michael S. Schmidt, Comey was giving a speech to his FBI team in Los Angeles when he saw the news about his firing break on televisions in the room. He hadn't been informed yet, and at first thought he it was a joke:

In response, Mr. Comey laughed, saying he thought it was a fairly funny prank.

Then his staff started scurrying around in the background and told Mr. Comey that he should step into a nearby office.
Continue reading the main story

Mr. Comey stopped addressing the group. He proceeded to shake hands with the employees he had been speaking to. Then he stepped into a side office, where he confirmed that he had been fired. At that point, he had not heard from the White House.

JAMES WEST

James West isMother Jones' senior digital editor in New York. Check out his six-part video seriesfor our National Magazine Award-winning private prison exposé (and don't miss the bit where he gets arrested). Find him on Twitter or Instagram.

Trump Goes Full Watergate—and Threatens Russia Investigation

His Nixonian firing of FBI Director James Comey creates a crisis.

DAVID CORN AND AJ VICENSMAY 9, 2017 7:32 PM

Not since Watergate.

How else can one start an article about President Donald Trump summarily firing FBI chief James Comey?

On March 20, Comey appeared before the House Intelligence Committee and took the unusual step of publicly disclosing that his bureau had been investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russians since last July. This was a historic moment. First Comey said Trump's allegation that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him in Trump Tower was complete bunk. Then he noted the bureau had been conducting a top-secret counterintelligence operation targeting people close to Trump. So the FBI chief was calling the president a liar and saying his associates were being probed. He was a threat to Trump and the White House.

It's hard to envision a more important and sensitive investigation than one focused on people linked to a president or one that looks at how Vladimir Putin covertly intervened in an American election to benefit the eventual winner. And now Trump has potentially upended these inquiries by firing the guy in charge. This is reminiscent of when President Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor who was getting too close to the truth. Nixon canned Cox rather than cooperating with his investigation.

The Trump White House announced Comey was being fired at the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein—as if to suggest that this was not Trump's initiative. But Sessions had supposedly recused himself from investigations related to the Trump-Russia scandal. Calling for the firing of the man supervising the investigation would seem to violate such a recusal.

The Justice Department duo contended that Comey deserved to be shown the door for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email server case—in particular, holding a press conference in July to say the case was closed but criticizing Clinton and then a week before the election notifying Congress that the investigation was being revived to review a new cache of Clinton emails found on a laptop belonging to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. (Those emails ended up being a big nothing-burger.)

A three-page letter put out by Sessions and Rosenstein did not refer to the Russian investigations. It highlighted old criticisms of Comey related to the Clinton email case. But in a letter sent to Comey, Trump pointed out that Comey had thrice informed the president that he was not a target of the Russia probes. Clearly, the Russian matter was on Trump's mind as he decided to pink-slip Comey. (An FBI director is appointed to a 10-year term, but he can be fired before finishing the stint.)

Trump's action is a reversal from his previous bromance with Comey. Last October, Trump said "it took guts" for Comey to renew the Clinton email investigation. On January 22, a smiling Trump hugged Comey during a White House meeting and said with a chuckle, "He's become more famous than me." (What could be higher praise from Trump?) On April 12, Trump said he had confidence in Comey. On May 3, White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated that Comey had Trump's support.

So what changed? Judging from his tweets, Trump seems to feel threatened by the ongoing Russia investigations, which have not faded. On Monday, a Senate hearing revealed that Trump's White House did not quickly act in response to a warning that national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Testimony also showed that US intelligence had obtained information in late 2015 on interactions between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents. During that hearing, Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked about Trump's business ties to Russia, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper gave an answer that suggested US intelligence had looked into this. Hours after this hearing, Trump sent out a series of false tweets calling the Russia story a hoax and claiming (inaccurately) that Clapper had said there was no collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia. The president was protesting too much.

Trump's decision to terminate Comey cannot be separated from the Russia investigation. After all, his political and business associates were being probed by Comey. And there's no telling how this move will affect this investigation. "FBI agents value their integrity more than anything, and if nothing else, this is a challenge to the integrity of whatever investigation Trump is trying to stifle," David Gomez, a former FBI agent, tells Mother Jones.

After this brazen move, several Democrats tied it to the Russia investigation. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted, "Director Comey should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of the investigation into Russia and Trump associates at the time he was fired." Sen. Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the committee, issued this statement: "The administration insists there's no 'there there,' yet President Trump has so far fired the acting Attorney General, nearly every U.S. attorney, and now the Director of the FBI. In addition, this President's choice for Attorney General has been forced to recuse himself, and the National Security Advisor has resigned, as a result of undisclosed contacts with Russian officials. Now more than ever, it is vital that our ongoing investigation is completed in a credible and bipartisan way. We also need to hear directly from former Director Comey about the FBI investigation and related events." And Sen. Chuck Schumer called for the appointment of a special prosecutor, noting that if Rosenstein does not appoint such an investigator, Americans will suspect "a cover-up."

Trump now gets to appoint the next FBI director. How can anyone he places in this job be trusted to manage these sensitive Russia-related inquiries that may lead to Trump's doorstep? Comey has been attacked by both Democrats and Republicans at different points. He had few political supporters in Washington. But Comey was independent of the White House and Sessions' Justice Department. That gave him space to oversee the critical Trump-Russia inquiries. Trump has now obliterated that space and independence. That's big trouble. And this is a crisis.

DAVID CORN

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook.

AJ VICENS

AJ Vicens is a reporter at Mother Jones. You can reach him at avicens@motherjones.com. For more of his stories, click here.

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, and stories like this are made possible by readers like you. Donate or to help fund independent journalism.

06 April 2017

Jeff Sessions exaggerates claim about 'sanctuary' policies and violating federal law 30MAR17

Jeff Sessions

Attorney General

"Just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these (‘sanctuary city’) policies also violate federal law."

in a press briefing – Monday, March 27, 2017

US AG fotze jeff sessions lied to the US Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings and he continues to lie to the American people. He fits right in with the rest of the fascist in the drumpf/trump-pence administration, vigorously participating in the White House's Orwellian propaganda campaign . From Politifact.....

Jeff Sessions exaggerates claim about 'sanctuary' policies and violating federal law

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said "sanctuary cities" that won’t cooperate immigration authorities are acting unlawfully and stand to lose funds if they don’t comply.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has determined that policies in such jurisdictions are illegal, Sessions said March 27.

"Not only do these policies endanger lives of every American, just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these policies also violate federal law," Sessions, who began leading the department this year under Trump’s administration, said during a White House press briefing.

Is that accurate? Sessions is exaggerating what the inspector general actually said.

Inspector general’s memo

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to cut federal funding for so-called sanctuary cities, claiming they harbor criminals and risk public safety.

There is not a legal, federal definition for "sanctuary cities," but they’re generally regarded as local governments that limit their cooperation with immigration officials. Usually they do that by refusing to hold people in local jails (beyond the time they would have been released) when asked to do so by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement.

That’s called a refusal to honor a detainer request. ICE detainers ask local law enforcement agencies to alert the federal agency of upcoming releases of individuals and to detain them for up to 48 hours so that immigration authorities can pick them up.

Jurisdictions with "sanctuary" policies argue that they have good reasons not to co-operate with immigration officials. They say that their policies help build trust between local police and their community, and that their cities are not crime magnets.

Amid Trump’s call to cut funding for sanctuary cities, some cities such as Boston and New York remain committed to policies that shield immigrants. Others, fearing a loss of money, have walked back their policies. A day after Trump signed an executive order to advance his promise, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez directed county officials to comply with detainer requests, though he had previously claimed his jurisdiction was not a sanctuary.

Sessions was basing his claim that the cities were violating the law on an inspector general’s memo. In May 2016, Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general wrote a memo to the assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs in response to queries on whether jurisdictions receiving department grants were violating the law, specifically 8 U.S. Code Section 1373.

Section 1373 says federal, state or local government entities or officials may not prohibit or restrict the exchange of information with federal immigration officers regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any individual.

Of the more than 140 jurisdictions in question, the inspector general’s office took a sample of 10 jurisdictions, which included the state of California, Chicago, and Miami-Dade County in Florida. It reviewed their policies regarding their interaction and communication with ICE and asked ICE officials for feedback.

All 10 jurisdictions had policies limiting in some way their cooperation with ICE detainer requests, the May 2016 memo said.

But local jails are not required by law to respond to detainers requests, and the handling of detainers is not addressed in Section 1373.

Yet the May 2016 memo raised concerns about the wording in some local ordinances and how officials may be interpreting and applying them.

For instance, a Chicago ordinance said, "except as otherwise provided under applicable federal law, no agent or agency shall disclose information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any person unless required to do so by legal process."

The inspector general’s office raised concerns on whether Chicago city employees were aware of their legal authority to act against the local ordinance and respond to ICE detainer requests.

Policies in other jurisdictions besides Chicago "may be causing local officials to believe and apply the policies in a manner that prohibits or restricts cooperation with ICE in all respects. That, of course, would be inconsistent with and prohibited by Section 1373."

A spokesman for Sessions highlighted the previous line as backup for the attorney general’s claim.

But that line has a footnote, which says:

"The ICE officials we spoke with noted that no one at (Department of Homeland Security) or ICE has made a formal legal determination whether certain state and local laws or policies violate Section 1373, and we are unaware of any Department of Justice decision in that regard. These ICE officials were also unaware of any legal action taken by the federal government against a state or local jurisdiction to require cooperation."

Experts evaluate Sessions’ interpretation

Several immigration law scholars we reached out to disagreed with Sessions’ read of the memo.

We spoke with five immigration law scholars; four of them disagreed with Sessions' interpretation of the memo.

The closest support for Sessions' claim came from Gabriel (Jack) Chin, a professor and director of clinical legal education at the University of California-Davis law school. The concerns raised by the inspector general give Sessions’ claim some credence, he said.

"While there is a little hedge because no jurisdiction has been accused of violating 1373, or found to have done so, my reading is that some jurisdictions are in apparent violation of the law," Chin said.

The other were more skeptical.

"Sessions went beyond what the report said. The report expresses concern that some cities’ policies might violate section 1373, but in the end the report stops short of finding any violations," said Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. "In fact, the language of the report seems carefully chosen to limit itself to raising concerns without finding violations."

The "may" qualification in the report "is far from a definitive conclusion that these policies are against the law," said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University who has opined in the Washington Post that Trump’s executive order related to so-called sanctuary cities is unconstitutional.

"The inspector general had no real information, but merely a vague idea that it was possible that in some jurisdictions policies may be causing a violation of Section 1373," said Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan who used to run the civil rights office at Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration.

The argument in the inspector general's memo seems to be that the policies could violate Section 1373 as applied, noted Huyen Pham, a law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law.

"But the inspector general recognizes that this argument would require a lot more systematic gathering of empirical information than what it did in its investigation," Pham said. "Thus the carefully couched 'may be' language."

Our ruling

Sessions said, "Just last May, the Department of Justice inspector general found that these (‘sanctuary’) policies also violate federal law."

A memo issued by the inspector general raised questions about how local officials may be interpreting and applying ordinances that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

But the memo also explicitly said a formal legal determination on whether certain state and local laws or policies violate Section 1373 had not been made by immigration officials and that his office was unaware of any Justice Department decision in that regard.

Sessions’ statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

About this statement:

Published: Thursday, March 30th, 2017 at 11:03 a.m.

Researched by: Miriam Valverde

Edited by: Angie Drobnic Holan

Subjects: Crime, Criminal Justice, Homeland Security, Immigration

Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions Delivers Remarks on Sanctuary Jurisdictions, March 27, 2017

Email exchange, Justice Department press office, March 27, 2017

Office of the Inspector General, Memo on jurisdictions and Section 1373 compliance, May 31, 2016

PolitiFact, Trump-O-Meter, Cancel all funding of sanctuary cities

Email interview, Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, March 28, 2017

Email interview, Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, March 28, 2017

Email interview, Gabriel (Jack) Chin, a professor and director of clinical legal education at the University of California-Davis law school, March 28, 2017

Phone interview, Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan, March 28, 2017

Email interview, Huyen Pham, a law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law, March 29, 2017

16 March 2017

Weekend Update on Donald Trump's Wiretapping Accusation - SNL

WELL DONE SNL, you give the drumpf/trump-pence administration the respect they deserve....

Weekend Update on Donald Trump's Wiretapping Accusation - SNL

Published on Mar 5, 2017

Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week's biggest news, including President Donald Trump's accusation that President Obama wiretapped him and his address to Congress.

10 March 2017

One Simple Question That Could Break the Trump-Russia Scandal Wide Open 7MAR17

ON Russian hacking of the Clinton / Kaine campaign's and other's e mails and releasing them through wikileaks the drumpf/trump-pence campaign now administration is dirty. Whether directly involved or not is yet to be determined though drumpf/trump did encourage the Russians to hack the Clinton / Kaine campaign. michael flynn, jeff sessions and others with the drumpf/trump-pence campaign had contact, meetings, conversations and business dealings with putin and the ruling oligarchs of Moscow. An independent council needs to be established to work in conjunction with the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Dept of Justice to find out what was discussed (U.S. sanctions, Russian hegemony, dividing up Eastern Europe and the Baltics a la the hitler-stalin non-aggression pact?). This is not something that can be let go now that the election is over and drumpf/trump is (NOT MY) president. There are issues involving America's national security, NATO, the Ukraine and Baltic States and the integrity of our electoral process that need to be addressed. fotze michael flynn should be barred from any future government position forever, and fotze a.g. jeff sessions should resign because he lied during his Senate confirmation hearings proving he can not be trusted to tell the truth about his contacts with the Russians. This from +Mother Jones .....

One Simple Question That Could Break the Trump-Russia Scandal Wide Open

The answer might not be too hard to find.

DAVID CORNMAR. 7, 2017 7:31 AM

The Trump-Russia scandal keeps widening. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned after revelations that he had privately talked to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the sanctions imposed on Russia as punishment for its hacking of political targets during the 2016 election to aid Donald Trump. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from Justice Department or FBI investigations involving Russia and the Trump campaign after he was caught falsely claiming he had not interacted with Russian officials during the campaign, when he was a top Trump adviser. (He, too, had met with Kislyak.) News reports keep yielding more information indicating Trump associates were in contact with Russian officials and possibly Russian intelligence. Reportedly there is at least one FBI investigation on this front; the House and Senate intelligence committees have each launched their own probes. And this past weekend, Trump had a Twitter meltdown and hurled the unsubstantiated Breitbart-born accusation that Obama had illegally spied on him in Trump Tower. It is becoming tough to track all the developments, as the story becomes more complicated and the prospects for a long and complex investigation increase. But there is a simple question that might be easy to answer and that could cut to the chase.

What happened during Flynn's conversations with Kislyak before the election?

One fundamental issue in this scandal is what interactions occurred between Trump and his associates and Vladimir Putin's regime and its agents. Trump and his political aides have repeatedly insisted there were no communications between the Trump camp and Russians during the campaign. Days after the election—in response to news reports quoting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov saying that "there were contacts" between the Trump team and the Kremlin—Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks claimed the campaign had "no contact with Russian officials" before the election. After the conclusion of a January 11 press conference, Trump insisted his campaign had no contact with Russia. At a February 14 White House briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer asserted there had been no communications between the Trump campaign and Russians. And Trump has frequently declared—as he did at a press conference last month—"I have nothing to do with Russia." (That is false. Trump has repeatedly tried to do business in Russia, and he held the Miss Universe contest, which he owned until 2015, in Moscow, in partnership with oligarch Aras Agalarov, with whom Trump was pursuing other deals in Russia.)

The public record contradicts the denials of the Trump crew. Flynn, Sessions, onetime Trump foreign policy advisers Carter Page and J.D. Gordon, and former campaign manager Paul Manafort each had some degree of contact with Russian officials during the campaign. Perhaps the most intriguing interaction involved Flynn.

When the Washington Post broke the news that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak during the transition, the newspaper's reporters spoke to the Russian ambassador, who revealed a fact that has not received sufficient public attention: Flynn and Kislyak were in communication prior to Election Day. This statement belied all the Trump camp claims that there had been no hobnobbing with the Russians during the campaign. But the implications run deeper.

Beginning in early June, there were news reports that the Russians were behind the hacking of Democratic targets that led to the public release, through WikiLeaks and other outlets, of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. (In October, emails swiped from Clinton campaign CEO John Podesta would be released.) In late July, Obama said that "experts have attributed this [hack] to the Russians." In mid-August, Trump, as the GOP nominee, received an intelligence briefing that noted that Moscow was behind the hacks and leaks. Flynn attended that briefing. On September 7, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, pointed to Obama's July statement and added, "The Russians hack our systems all the time, not just government but also corporate and personal systems." A month later, Clapper's office and the Department of Homeland Security released a statement stating that Moscow was definitely the culprit.

So from the start of June until Election Day, it was widely noted that the Russians were either the likely perps or the guilty party—that is, Putin's government had conducted a secret operation to influence an American election. Though it would take the intelligence community until after the election to reach the conclusion that this scheme was mounted to benefit Trump, it did seem obvious throughout the campaign season that Clinton was being harmed by the operation and Trump was being helped.

All this means that when Flynn was talking to Kislyak—or any other Russian government officials—during the campaign, he was in contact with a foreign power waging political warfare against the United States and had reason to suspect or know this. And throughout the summer and fall campaign, Flynn, who was already cozy with Moscow (having accepted a speaking fee to hang out with Putin at a Moscow gala for RT in December 2015), was Trump's most senior foreign policy aide. (He was given a prime speaking spot at the Republican National Convention.)

What was Flynn, this prominent and important Trump adviser, saying to Kislyak during this stretch? The ambassador refused to tell the Washington Post what he and Flynn discussed. Was Flynn firmly telling the Russians to cease meddling in US politics? Did they discuss the hacking at all? Or perhaps Flynn was signaling to Moscow that Putin would get a better deal if Trump were elected. If Flynn uttered to Kislyak anything of that nature—or even if he ducked the issue of the hacking—Moscow could have read this as encouragement for its covert operation to undermine the US election.

There has been speculation that the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow on the hacking/leaking plot. (Clapper this weekend said he had seen no evidence of such collusion but noted it was possible evidence might have emerged since he left the government in January.) But communications between the Trump camp and the Russian government need not have been so explicit to qualify as outrageous and improper. On the campaign trail, Trump had praised Putin, refused to acknowledge the Russian hack, and raised the possibility of easing the sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. If Flynn was reinforcing Trump's pro-Putin message in his private chats with Kislyak, that would have been reassuring for Moscow and might possibly have emboldened a regime as it was assaulting the US electoral system.

Flynn's pre-election communications with Kislyak could be far more significant than his conversations during the transition about the Obama sanctions that prompted his firing. Investigators working the Trump-Russia beat should zero in on this. Flynn should be asked when exactly he was gabbing with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. Phone and text records ought to be reviewed. There might be transcripts of these discussions, for Kislyak was routinely spied on by the US intelligence community. (That's why Flynn got caught lying about his talks with the Russian ambassador during the transition.)

There is plenty of muck for investigators and reporters to be raking regarding the Trump team's interactions with Russia. It is evident that there were contacts during the campaign—and that Trump and his lieutenants have repeatedly dissembled about this. And Flynn may well be one key to figuring out what was going on. In recent days, Sessions' two acknowledged interactions with Kislyak have drawn much notice. As much scrutiny should be applied to Flynn's pre-election communications with the Russian. It might just offer a path to solving the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

NORTON META TAG

12 May 2017